I agree that it’s silly to feel like you ought to get the same price regardless, anymore than you should get the lunch price at dinner or the daily special from last week. That distinction is not made in the OP, and I didn’t assume that was what he meant. I would be annoyed if I asked about ordering off the children’s menu and they said it was fine, and then it showed up on the check with a higher price; if there was an upcharge, I would expect the waiter to mention in it, in the same way I would expect him to mention it if there’s an upcharge to sub hash browns in for french fries (unless it’s the kind of place that’s so fancy that you just don’t ever mention prices at all: I am thinking more like at a Denny’s, here).
Wait a minute, you think they should charge you more for the exact same item based upon your age? It’s the same corn dog, right? Same sides (or lack thereof) and all that?
Restaurants do this all the time. Some charge different prices based upon the time of day, too.
Of course–do you think you’re entitled to a free quesadilla?
As one of the “entitled” people in the thread 
I wanted to pop in quickly and say that I don’t give a crap if they want to charge me more for the item - it just seems counterproductive to deny me that item altogether when it’s something that is on the menu and is something that I want to eat. (Ok, I lie slightly - I am rather poor, and would like the place more if they sold it to me for the listed price. But if they want to charge me more, I don’t get upset about that, especially if the waitperson tells me about it before the check shows up.)
And yes, I go to buffet places (very infrequently, and I bet they love me to death) and pay full price for a tiny amount of food. When I go, it’s purposeful, because I want to have a varied-food dinner out without wasting platefuls of food.
If I am eating at a nicer restaurant I’m generally not counting pennies or looking for a discount. I’ve often ordered from the senior menu because it is an adult meal with smaller portions, but ask the server if I can get the senior portion while paying the regular adult price. I’ve almost never had a problem, and if they say they can’t I ask for the regular meal and a to-go box. I’ve worked in restaurants and know how the profit margins look - the food cost is usually the smallest portion. I’m paying mostly to have someone else shop, cook, serve & clean up.
Can I also demand free crayons and place mats that I can color on?
I don’t get how “having a small appetite” is an argument that you must be allowed to order off the kids menu. Lots of restaurants serve ridiculously large portion sizes. So take home leftovers, or accept that you’re paying for more than you can eat, or just over eat and get fat like the rest of us!
That said, I still don’t get why the guy at IHOP wouldn’t let my friend order the funny face pancakes when we were in high school. Charge her for a full stack of pancakes if you must, but if the 30 seconds it takes to make a whip cream smile is what it takes to make your customers happy, is it really too much to ask?
No, they Have a right to offer some people a discount based on their age. Not getting a discount is not paying more.
This is the worst kind of entitlement of all, and these kinds of customers are the worst thing about working in the restaurant business.
The servers typically don’t have any say about it. They get told “adults can’t order off the kids’ menu,” so that’s what they have to go with. Chains like IHOP don’t usually have a system in place for the server to be able to unilaterally convert an item like that into a different price, and rather than have servers mess with that on their own, which can caus a lot of confusion and inconsistency from server to server, it’s easier just to have a blanket policy. Servers are the ones who have to take the grief, but they aren’t making the rules - especially not in corporate stores where the companies does not want its employees trying to think or make decisions. Everything is programmed, and it doesn’t do to screw with the program.
Missed the edit window, but wanted to add this:
Having said all that above, for something as simple as making a smiley face pancake, she could have just written up a regular shortstack and asked the cook to put smiley faces on them. It would be no big deal, but this server may have been new, and being too overly literal about the policy. In my experience working restaurants, most veteran servers would just tell the cook to do it and charge it as a normal stack. It doesn’t involve the addition of any new ingredients or anything…well, I guess it adds whipped cream - a lot of corporate stores can be really anal about accounting for every ounce of food cost. I worked at a store once that literally portion controlled virtually every kind of sauce or ingredient to the ounce (an omelet gets exactly this many ounces of cheese, this many ounces of diced ham, the turkey dinner gets exactly this many ounces of mashed potatoes and this many ounces of gravy. The Benedicts get exactly this many ounces of hollandaise, etc). Everything was pre-portioned in to solo cups, and the cups were counted. It was insane.
This is why I like restaurants that offer ala cart pricing. Sometimes all I want is an order of collard greens with an order of macaroni and cheese; I don’t want to have to get a whole meal to get just those two things.
Or sometimes I’ll just order off the appetizer menu. Sometimes you get so much food that it’s like you’ve ordered a real meal. I’ve never been denied when I’ve ordered only appetizer foods.
But unless I’ve been dragged against my will to a restaurant, I don’t see the appeal of ordering off the children’s menu. Most of those choices seem to be no different than what you can get in the freezer’s section of your local grocery store. Why would I say, “Let’s go out to eat!” and then order some dried-out chicken nuggets? If nothing else on the menu appeals to me, including the appetizers, I’d immediately ask my companion if we could go somewhere else.
Another situation where adults ordering off the kid’s menu seems appropriate to me: when the kid’s menu has foods not offered by the regular restaurant menu.
Case in point: My little brother hates basically all seafood–everyone else in my family, including his wife, love it. So occasionally we’d go to a Red Lobster and he would order a kid’s menu chicken fingers or hamburger. (this is not an issue anymore, as their menu has a lot of steak/chicken/pasta items now, but I don’t remember that being the case 10-15 years ago–nowadays he has a chicken pasta or a steak and is happy as a (heh) clam.)
I only think “entitlement” comes into it if it’s A) clear that there’s a discount for kids/seniors as a loss leader (I wouldn’t argue that an adult could get the “Kids with an adult eat free on Tuesdays!” discount at my local good diner), or B) if they are insistent past the point of a simple “I’m not very hungry/nothing on the menu is all that appealing today, is it okay if I order from the kids/seniors menu?”.
The one thing you typically see on a lot of kids’ menus that appeals to me is hot dogs. I like hot dogs, and they aren’t often found on adult menus. Sometimes a couple of dogs and some fries sounds better to me than whetever fancy pasta they’ve got on the adult menu. More places ought to offer dogs. I wonder why they don’t.
I don’t want to come across as a snob, but maybe it’s an image thing?
Hot dogs = cheap and easy
I imagine if you’re running a fine dining restaurant (not something really upscale, but still kind of “nice”), you don’t want the first image that people get when they pass by your store front is that of guests cramming hot dogs into their mouths. You’d prefer them seeing people crunching on crisp, colorful salads or spooning noodles on their forks. Not dressing up hot dogs like they’re at a ballgame.
Also, are you going to serve fries with the hot dogs? Or the gourmet red-skinned mashed potatoes that your restaurant is known for?
I like hot dogs too. But I wouldn’t blame a restaurant for not serving them.
I agree, and I’ve never, ever had a problem with this. I’ve always been pleasantly surprised at how eager waitstaff are to accomodate slightly off-menu requests. Case in point: Famous Daves does not offer barbeque chicken breasts, but they do have chicken breasts on the menu in other places. My waitperson was only too glad to offer me this accomodation.
I’ve never worked full-on food service, but I was a coffee shop barista for a while. Any special request the customer had was usually accomodated easily, often to the surprise of the customer. If your coffee shop won’t make small accomodations, find another. Life’s too short.
The only times I have had a problem even vaguely like this have been at places with ill-trained, generally ill-mannered employees, e.g., places that charged full drink price for a glass of water or places that would only fill your drink 2/3 of the way if you asked for it without ice. These places soon went out of business in my experience.
It’s never up to the waitstaff. Our priority is to make you happy so you’ll leave us a decent tip. Telling you you can’t choose a cheaper option is counterproductive to this goal. I would say the 95% of the time a server tells you you can’t have what you ask for, it’s because policy is against it (and it’s not worth a reprimand or getting fired to try to get around it), or manager/chef has refused it.